Studying the sun worth $30M to Ingersoll Machine Tools in Rockford

ROCKFORD - Ingersoll Machine Tools is completing the guts of the world's largest telescope so it can study the solar system's largest object.

The builder of massive machines is creating the 52½-square-foot rotating base for the Advanced Technology Solar Telescope and its 49-foot-high, 324,000-ton mount assembly.

The $300 million project is being funded by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act - the stimulus package from the Great Recession - for 22 research institutions known collectively as Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy.

Ingersoll's portion of the project runs $30 million; more than 100 of its 194 workers had some part in the project.

The work kept more than just Ingersoll busy. About $9 million was outsourced to area companies, with Mechanical Inc. of Freeport and Comet Fabricating & Welding of Rockford as two of the three largest subcontractors.

Todd Trieloff, director of operations and special projects, said the telescope is exciting for Ingersoll because the company is using its machine tool technology in a new field. As big as the solar telescope is - it's scheduled to be installed in Hawaii by the end of the year - Ingersoll is bidding on two others:

The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope is a wide-field survey reflecting telescope that will be installed in Chile to photograph the entire sky every few nights. It will be twice as large as the ATST and may go into production later this year.

The Giant Magellan Telescope, also planned for Chile, is planned to be six times the size of the ATST and scheduled to be completed by 2020.

The Magellan is so large that Ingersoll, 707 Fulton Ave., would have to expand its plant or rent space to build its portion. Trieloff said the company should know by the end of 2014 whether it'll be involved in either project.

Even if Ingersoll is unsuccessful in winning those projects, building the ATST will pay dividends.

"The motion systems we've designed for it are very smooth and very accurate at very slow speeds," sales director Mike Reese said. "That's contrary to what we normally do. Usually, we want machines to be smooth and very accurate at very high speeds."

President/CEO Tino Oldani said that may open up even more markets.

"This is a new thing for machine tools. We've improved our accuracy by 10 times," he said. "We got the order because we know how to build big machines. By working on the project now, we can translate this knowledge to other machines.

"We now can do superfinishing of components. Normally, you would go to a grinding machine. We have learned we can achieve this accuracy on a milling machine that is equivalent or better than a grinding machine."